Containment / Uncontained. Working Across Borders

Artist list

Petra Bishai, Becky Bliss, Isabelle Busnel, Nadene Carr, Aphra Cheesman, Laila Marie Costa, Mandy Flood, Joanne Garner, Nik Hanton, Velvet Hart, Maarit Liukkonen, Kelly McDonald, Brendon Monson, Annelisse Pfeifer, Sarah Read, SORCA, Caroline Thomas, Timothy Information Limited, Maud Traon, Aneta Wrobel, Kathryn Yeats, Nina van Duijnhoven

In early 2017 jewellery artists from Aotearoa New Zealand’s Handshake Project and the UK-based group Dialogue Collective decided to collaborate, beginning with a mini online challenge: ‘same-time–different-place’. In March 2017 they exhibited their first collaboration called It Will All Come Out in The Wash, during Munich Jewellery Week.

Following that success, a group from Handshake collaborated with Dialogue Collective again in 2018 with the exhibition ‘Te Ao Hurihuri’, held at the Crypt Gallery in London’s Kings Cross. There were plans for Dialogue Collective to visit New Zealand in 2020 and exhibit the third and final collaboration with Handshake; but this did not eventuate due to COVID.

The project’s trajectory to date embodies the challenges of working across borders and within communities during a global pandemic. This collaboration, using the virtual world as a means of collaborating and exhibiting began with a mutual journey on Instagram.

In September 2021 they developed HSDC Co-lab for the ‘Radiant Pavilion’ event. Jewellery artworks were produced as large-scale wall posters and placed in the streets of Melbourne. These posters voiced concerns of containment and restricted freedom. HSDC then invited Melbourne based collective TempContemp to establish a New Zealand, United Kingdom and Australian collaboration. The three organisations are: HandShake (Aotearoa New Zealand), Dialogue Collective (UK), and TempContemp (AU).

Containment / Uncontained - working across borders is both an experience and expression of lockdown intimacy with bounded restraints. Our attempts to present an exhibition can be futile as Covid disrupts traditional ways of presenting and experiencing art. The subsequent uncertainty presents us with the challenge and opportunity to explore what a jewellery ‘exhibition’ could look like.


Related links with more information:
- CONTAINMENT – UNCONTAINED at Radiant Pavilion, Melbourne
- ZINE
- HSDC COLLAB  images and video
- Artworks on locations